1. Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to Internet traffic. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to mapping infrastructure of Internet traffic.
2. Related Art
The ability of various websites to attract advertising revenue is based largely on Internet traffic, where traffic is defined as Internet users accessing a web site or requesting content). Website publishers strive to develop the most relevant and interesting content to attract and drive traffic to their sites. The more traffic that a website has, the more advertising revenue the website can generate based on more page requests or click-throughs for a given advertisement. Websites that drive a high amount of Internet traffic may charge more for advertising space on the website. Additionally, advertising algorithms that determine ad placement across several websites may target placement on sites with a high amount of web traffic.
The above-described online advertising environment thus creates a premium on web traffic. This has led to an unfortunate rise in fraudulent web traffic. Fraudulent web traffic may be generated from a variety of sources including through redirects, hidden or embedded web pages, and botnets including computers dedicated to fraudulent activities and/or computers infected by malware. Fraudsters may use this fraudulent traffic to drive more advertising on their sites (or on websites of those buying the traffic from the fraudsters) and to collect revenue for advertisement requests or click-throughs.
For example, much of online advertisement placement is determined automatically based on Internet traffic analytics. In other words, advertisement placement is increasingly being determined via software algorithms instead of face-to-face negotiations between an advertiser and a website operator. Thus, fraudulent traffic may be utilized by some websites to gain more advertisement placements, even though the Internet traffic on their website is non-human in nature.
Additionally, the Internet increasingly facilitates more and transactions between parties. Trust in these transactions often depends at least in part on knowing a location of a user requesting the transaction. Typically, locations are determined by mapping databases or files that connect an IP address to the last known longitude and latitude of the IP address. However, such files may become quickly outdated. Further, these techniques may be circumvented by several technologies such as virtual private networks (“VPN”) or Tor that enable a user to masquerade his or her true location.